The Boys of Summer (Harperperennial Modern Classics)

Never really a dedicated sports fan, but a voracious and eclectic reader familiar with its reputation, I approached THE BOYS OF SUMMER fully expecting an excellent book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, but unprepared for what I found.Less a team history than a memoir of the best of times and the worst of times, author Roger Kahn, a former sportswriter for the late NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, has accomplished the nearly impossible task of preserving an era in amber.At the outset, we are introduced to Kahn's endearingly pretentious and unusual family: The father, Gordon, called "Gore-DON" by his wife, Olga, both teachers; the maternal grandfather, Dr. Rockow, a refugee of the Russian Revolution who obtained his Doctorate of Dentistry in Bern, Switzerland; the deceased grandmother, who, before her death at forty, had acheived a European M.D. Degree in an era when most women in her world were barely literate, much less successfully professional; the younger sister, Emily, stricken with polio; and Roger himself, a well-educated young man whose passion was Dodger baseball.[A previous reviewer is critical of the "Marxism" of the book, but obviously, s/he did not read past page thirty; in painting us a living portrait of his family, Kahn tells us that they read, among many others, "Karl Marx and Freud," and refers affectionately to his Russian-Jewish immigrant grandfather as an "old Marxist toothpuller." Kahn's family was somewhat unusual for its time in being stolidly and successfully middle-class and firmly dedicated to Middle European humanist intellectualism in Depression-era, overwhelmingly blue-collar Jewish Brooklyn; but to call this book "Marxist" or equate it with DAS KAPITAL is to say that THE CAT IN THE HAT is equivalent to GRAY'S ANATOMY because it was written by a Dr. Seuss.]Living within view of Ebbet's Field, baseball was central to Roger's summer universe. This centrality was reinforced by his erudite father, who, when not discussing Joyce and Flaubert at the dinner table, was playing endless games of catch with his son and regularly taking him to games. With no appreciation of sports, Olga, "who had pretentions toward atheism" pleaded with God to intervene: "Please let him read one book; just ONE book." God's choice for Roger was FUNDAMENTALS OF PITCHING, which he carried around with him for weeks.Whether Olga appreciated it or not, Roger was developing a Love For The Game, and he became the HERALD TRIBUNE's point man at Ebbet's Field just as the Dodgers emerged from a decades-long obscurity to become not only one of the preeminent franchises in baseball history, but also an historic team.The Brooklyn Dodgers had always been iconoclastic. The only Major League team representing only a portion of it's home city (granted, Brooklyn had been an independent city until 1898), the team members lived locally and were well-known in their various Brooklyn neighborhoods.From 1921 to 1938, the Dodgers were barely competitive. A chronically bankrupt franchise locally beloved but belittled as "dem bums," the fog began to lift in the War Years. The Dodgers captured a pennant in 1941. From 1941 to 1945 they played hard, but wartime manpower needs kept the team from truly excelling. It was not until 1947 that the Dodgers blossomed.And as they blossomed, they made history as well, being the first modern Major League team to sign a black player, Jackie Robinson. Despite being vilified by certain elements, Robinson was MVP and led them to stellar heights. And despite a plethora of personal opinions about Robinson, the team as a whole responded positively to Robinson's amazing energy, and played magnificently for the next decade. Though not every Dodger was dedicated to Civil Rights, only one, aptly named Dixie Walker, asked to be traded, and was. The rest eventually accepted Number 42 as a teammate, and either liked him or loathed him for himself.Perennial Pennant winners, they nonetheless could never overcome the dominance of their crosstown American League rivals, the Yankees, even in 1953, when they statistically outplayed the famed Murderers' Row team of 1927. The Dodger lament was always "Wait 'Til Next Year." It was not until 1955 that they could proudly claim, "This IS Next Year!"But by then, the team had aged, Robinson was gone, and Kahn, too, had moved on. The last trolleys ran in Brooklyn in October of 1956, and with no more trolleys to dodge, the Dodgers vanished from Brooklyn in 1957 and took up residence in Los Angeles. Kahn ends the first half of his book by recounting the death of his father, but it is only one ending among many in that time.Part Two of THE BOYS OF SUMMER brings us The Boys of Summer" in their autumn. Written in 1971, the book provides a series of encapsulated snapshots of each of the former team members in their fifties, some fat, some thin, some embittered, some wistful, some successful and some lost in time. The Boys in their age largely returned to their roots, most of them to little towns in the South and Midwest where they ran lumberyards, coached Little League, and were Presidents of their local Rotaries. Each has a story to tell, and so much of what made the Dodgers a truly great team is revealed in these pages.Jackie Robinson stands out. It is hard, sixty years later, to realize how daring owner Branch Rickey was to sign Robinson at that time, and how difficult Robinson's journey was. "Brown v. Board of Education" was still seven years in the future, Jim Crow was rampant, Dr. King's Montgomery Bus Boycott was a decade away, and still Robinson overcame all obstacles, mostly because of his iron determination off the field and his spectacular talent on the field, attributes which his teammates, and then his opponents, came to respect.The team's sudden, unexpected departure from Brooklyn is still lamented, and then-owner Walter O'Malley is still hated for it: "If a Brooklynite with a gun has only two bullets and Hitler, Mussolini and O'Malley are his targets, who does he shoot? O'Malley---twice."Although some reviewers accuse Kahn of revisionism in his treatment of O'Malley, a close reading of the last chapters reveals something different. While most Brooklynites' long-standing hatred of O'Malley is real, it is the hatred of the townsman for the corporation that closes the mill, throwing the factory town into crisis---personal, and yet remote.The bitterness remains. The Los Angeles Dodgers are still often referred to as the Los Angeles Traitors. In this reviewer's family, Dodger defeats, particularly to the Mets at Shea or to the Yankees, are greeted with, "Take that! That's what you get for leaving!" And it's been fifty years since they've gone. Of course, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn for seventy years beforehand.Kahn's hatred of O'Malley is more immediate and visceral than the average fan's. He so clearly utterly despises O'Malley, who comes across as a self-proclaimed Manhattanite, a rude, self-righteous, pompous, wealthy and greedy snob, a businessman with no interest in baseball, a seeker only of the greenback who cared not at all for fan affections, and who dismissed Brooklyn as the Provinces; in short a man who deserved, and perhaps even wanted, to be hated.The Irish Catholic O'Malley proclaimed himself a "Tory." He fined staffers a dollar each time they mentioned Branch Rickey by name. Robinson was a showboater in his estimation, and it was New York's fault the Dodgers left---if Brooklyn had wanted the team Brooklyn should have met his demands for a new stadium and other concessions.With no Love of The Game, O'Malley's decision to move the team was based, solely and selfishly, on his desire to line his own pockets (he was always notoriously cheap with fans, players, and staffers), and to create his own power dynasty far from the interference of the New York Elites, to whom he was an also-ran.Many people have written that the Dodgers left because "Brooklyn was changing" as "white flight" drove the middle classes to the suburbs. This ignores the fact that many areas did not change demographically, and that the process was neither sudden nor total. It also discounts the fact that minorities are not immune to an appreciation of the National Pastime. It ignores the fact that the Dodger departure was not so much an effect as a cause of these changes. Local historians mark 1957 as the end of an era in Brooklyn history.Lastly, although the Borough was changing, it was also remaining the same, as the home of newly-arrived immigrant minorities. Brooklyn could (and should) have remained the home of this beloved team. It was thriving and would have continued to thrive. As Kahn says: "In a perfect world, Brooklyn would have the Dodgers and the Mets would be in Los Angeles."Would that it were.

This is the best baseball book ever written -- in part because it is about more than baseball. Baseball is important to us because the drama of the game, the season, and the career all mirror the larger dramas of life. The great Dodger teams of the 1950s tell us a lot about how to master one's craft and how to overcome differences of race and socioeconomic background to work together as a team. Of course, we know this from all the conventional histories of the period, but Kahn's book is better because he captures the often contradictory personalities in all their complexity.For instance, Robinson has been portrayed alternativey as a "Tom" and as an iconic tower of strength akin to Martin Luther King. Neither portrayal is correct. He's a cocky, sometimes irritating guy. As Pee Wee Reese tells him: "some people throw at you because you're black and that's terrible; but some people throw at you because they plain don't like you." On the other hand, his manager Dressen says that Robinson is the smartest baseball player he ever saw. Robinson is uncompromising in his insistence on racial justice, but he's also able to play by the rules of the game and to lead the team. Reese is portrayed as critical in leading the team to accept Robinson and then to encourage Robinson to be the team leader. Both age with such dignity after their baseball lives that when the book is done, the reader will view them as the greatest of the game's heroes.By following up on each of the Dodger greats 20 years after the fact, Kahn is able to put the men and the game in their proper contexts. Some age gracefully -- Labine, Black, Erskine, Robinson, Reese. Others become embittered by the disappointments of life after their career, which stokes disappointment about their own careers -- Cox and Furillo, for instance. But again the portraits are fair and complex. One can't simply dismiss Furillo as hippy-hating hard hat of the late 1960s. Furillo stood up for the rights of ballplayers at great personal cost; and some of his bitterness is born of a sensitive nature that felt excluded from the various cliques among the team. Cox too is a likeable guy, despite some of the racial bitterness of the crowd he hangs out with 20 years later.As for the baseball part of the book, Kahn shows the team to be an offensive powerhouse that combined first rate defense in the form of Campanella at catcher, Reese-Robinson-Cox in the infield, and the grace of Snyder and Furillo in the outfield. The weakness is front line pitching. At times, Newcombe, Black, and Erskine achieve brilliance. But the Yankees had steadier and better pitching. Of course, a lot of it has to do with luck. As Kahn points out, the 1955 team was not the strongest of the World Series teams. He believes the team peaked in 1953. But they got hot at the right time in 1955 -- much like the Royals team of 1985 did 30 years later, several years after it reached its own peak.Regarding the injection of Kahn's own personal history into the book, it is hardly gratuitous. The rabid attachment of Kahn and his father to the team is a compelling portrait of the fan's perspective on the team, and Kahn's loss of his father in 1953 and the complications of his life thereafter mirror the life struggles of the players. And Kahn's portrayal of the newspaper business in the 1950s is excellent and is important for understanding how we perceive baseball through the prism of the media.So this memoir tells the tale of the great Dodger teams from the perspective of the players themselves, both at the time and then looking back over 20 years; from the perspective of the media; and from the perspective of the fans. A great baseball book and a great memoir.

I was looking to read a little more about the historical context of racism in America at that time and how Jackie Robinson and Mister Ricky started to address this. Certainly hoped for a little more about the first years of Jackie Robinson in major league baseball. However this is a real baseball history of a pennant winning baseball side and then their subsequent reflections and life developments. Still interesting just not what I was looking for.

Richard Williams of the Guardian alerted me to this reissue of a book first published in 1972. It recounts the achievements of the the great Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the early 1950s, before the franchise was shifted to LA, but the real meat of the book is the author's pilgrimage to all parts of the USA to find out how the heroes of the fifties are faring fifteen years on. Roger Kahn was "embedded" with the team and enjoyed their confidences when he reported on their playing days, so he is welcomed and trusted when he reappears later in their lives. The stories which emerge are moving, inspiring, sad and funny, but from all of them you get a sense of the nobility of these professional sportsmen, and the telling is superbly done.

I've been searching for this book for some time, having read recommendations about it being either the best or among the best books on any sport ever. Now I have it, and even with a quick read it is living up to that high reputation.

Reads like a collection of individual stories centered around a team in the middle of the most progressive time in Baseball. Although I enjoyed the book it seemed in the wrong order (or 2 separate books?). The author's own story is quite interesting and sets the scene - the real value is in the players. The last section of the players stories is great.

Excellent book.